While the ultraviolent A SERBIAN FILM has assaulted international audiences with its taboo-smashing sex and violence, another film from that country has also been attracting the horror world’s bloodthirsty gaze. While not as graphic, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A PORNO GANG will likely attract equal buzz and has already been equally controversial prior to its U.S. disc debut this week.

Out tomorrow, August 14 on DVD and Blu-ray from Synapse Films, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A PORNO GANG (reviewed here) focuses on a ragtag traveling sideshow of uninhibited performers led by wannabe filmmaker Marko (Mihajlo Jovanovic). In desperate need of money, Marko agrees to shoot snuff films with his troupe as the killers and local villagers—some of whom prove remarkably willing—as subjects. Fango had the opportunity to speak with Mladen Djordjevic, the writer/director of this boundary-smashing film.

FANGORIA: By this point you’re probably annoyed by this question, but let’s get it out of the way: Your movie is often mentioned in the same breath as A SERBIAN FILM. But aside from both having the underlying themes of a postwar society trying to find its way—and both being made by Serbians—the two couldn’t be more different. Do you feel the comparisons are fair?

MLADEN DJORDJEVIC: Yes, in both films one can find a strong reaction toward Serbian society, but also toward the entire contemporary world, which we find very apocalyptic. Films in Serbia usually take very artistic approaches to reality, and this new wave of brutal films brings reality to theaters. We want to shake up the audience and sober them up in a sociopolitical and emotional sense. That’s the reason these films are so explicit and uncompromising.

FANG: The heroes in PORNO GANG are reminiscent of counterculture hippies like the Merry Pranksters, or even the Manson family. Were groups like these something you had knowledge of, or were the characters inspired by a similar movement in Serbia?

DJORDJEVIC: You could say this has a kind of “neo-hippie” style. But there are no such marginal groups in Serbia, that share some unique and strong ideology. For me, groups like the Porno Gang are substitutes for family in times when family values are broken.

FANG: So what, then, did you draw your inspiration from?

DJORDJEVIC: They were inspired by characters from my previous film MADE IN SERBIA, a documentary about the Serbian porn industry [included on the PORNO GANG Blu-ray]. To play the Porno Gang, my first idea was to have the real porn actors [from MADE IN SERBIA], but that turned out to be impossible, because the people I wrote were too complex to be played by people who weren’t professional actors—and also, real porn actors are not easily attached to serious moviemaking. They live in chaos, and the small amount of money I had to offer them wouldn’t be enough to tie them down. So if I couldn’t have them, it was important to get new, fresh faces, with a new energy.

FANG: The cast really bares all, both physically and emotionally. How difficult was it to get them to pull off such intense—and often naked—performances?

DJORDJEVIC: The casting lasted roughly six months, and about 30 actors refused to appear in the film after they read the script, or heard my explanation regarding the explicit approach to sex and violence. At the end of this troublesome process, I found young, brave, talented people who have introduced the spirit of change in Serbian filmmaking.

FANG: It feels like everyone involved was not only extremely close, but also had tremendous faith in the project.

DJORDJEVIC: We had a difficult preparation process before the shoot. We rehearsed almost every scene, so during the filming everything went well; no issues, no problems. We entered the process as liberated people who believed in each other. We worked as a family, as a guerrilla unit, with one aim, one brave idea and a strong belief in success.

FANG: Touching on practically every taboo imaginable—including rape and bestiality—this film has a sense of danger to it, as if nothing was off limits. In your opinion, can a filmmaker or artist ever go too far, or is everything fair game?

DJORDJEVIC: I agree that nothing is “off limits” in PORNO GANG. There are no limits if there is a deeper sense to all the explicit sex and violence. Exploring new areas, crossing the borders…in my case, that’s not the exhibitionism issue.

FANG: PORNO GANG is shot almost like a documentary, which creates a sense of realism and pulls the audience into the gang’s world. What made you decide to shoot the film this way?

DJORDJEVIC: For me, that sort of aesthetic was the way to approach the subject in a realistic manner—to make the audience believe in the strange story. Having a rough, raw, sharp visual style, in combination with stylized costumes and set design, was an interesting combination, and an experiment for me.

FANG: My frame of reference might be different from yours, but I couldn’t help thinking of John Waters or Russ Meyer or even Dennis Hopper’s EASY RIDER. Were any American filmmakers on your radar, or was PORNO GANG solely influenced by Serbian filmmakers?

DJORDJEVIC: Yes, of course, the auteurs you mentioned were very important for me. My approach is a postmodern, metafilmic one, a mixture of various styles and genres. What’s interesting in PORNO GANG is the combination of the Yugoslav “black wave” aesthetics—Pavlovic, Zilnik—with elements from modern Japanese movies and American horror cinema, as well as John Waters’ and Paul Morrissey’s films. I wanted to see how Kemp aesthetics would work in the Serbian mud. It’s a very interesting combination, more interesting for me than being socially and politically engaged, although PORNO GANG has that layer as well.

FANG: How difficult was it to find distribution, both in your country as well as in others? In the U.S., theaters and video companies would probably be terrified of the title alone, let alone the hardcore content.

DJORDJEVIC: I was lucky to find an excellent distributor in Synapse Films. We were very successful at fantasy festivals, and have won several prizes in Porto Alegre at Fantaspoa, Montevideo Fantastico, Santiago and Buenos Aires Rojo Sangre. As far as Serbia was concerned, there was no intervention or censorship during the shoot and editing, but there were some trap-attempts at the end. When I asked the Ministry of Culture for postproduction money, the adviser to the Minister of Culture, our renowned director Goran Markovic, intervened and made it impossible for the film to get transferred to 35mm. He didn’t understand the movie and declared he couldn’t sleep after seeing it, and that he was disgusted.

But winning the Nebojsa Djukelic Award at the Belgrade Film Festival, an invitation to the Puchon Fantastic Film Festival and numerous glowing reviews, as well as my letter to the Minister of Culture, produced a change of climate, so I got the money after all. I was also backed by our famous directors Joca Jovanovic, Zelimir Zilnik and Srdjan Dragojevic, who don’t agree with that kind of Eastern European policeman-before-the-wall-fell thinking, so it meant a lot for my eventual victory. The film went to Serbian theaters after that.

FANG: America’s views towards sex are somewhat prudish, but compared to many places in the world, perhaps we’re somewhat liberal. The members of the Porno Gang are, in essence, rebelling against their sexually oppressive society. Which do you feel is the more sexually free culture—America’s or Serbia’s?

DJORDJEVIC: I don’t know how things work in the U.S., because I’ve never been there. But considering American films, there is an obvious repression when it comes to explicit sex scenes. In Serbia, it’s more or less the same. I spotted one interesting thing at the Puchon festival. Korean society is traditional and conservative. They don’t mind extreme violence, but they’re shocked by explicit scenes of sex. I’ve come to a conclusion: The more they hush down and hide Eros, the more it comes back on the other side in the form of Thanatos, the violence and its bizarre quality. That’s why Korean films are so explicit when it comes to violence.

FANG: While the acts committed by the Gang are considered deplorable, in this film the villains are the film industry, the authorities and the townspeople. Were you making a statement here, or just poking fun at the system? Was this film made out of anger or love for art and the creative process?

DJORDJEVIC: The statement toward the police, authorities and the state is very clear and obvious. As far as the creative process is concerned, I’ve always liked to contemplate an author and the distance he has or hasn’t from the art he creates. My film is about crossing that border; the author stepping from reality to the world of his art, the escapism into the world of his creation.

FANG: PORNO GANG is an extremely politically driven film with many separate messages. What do you hope viewers take with them after seeing the movie?

DJORDJEVIC: The film dwells on one of the popular themes here in Serbia: the clash between urban and rural Serbia. I have shown that the limits in between the two are fuzzy and nonexistent. I didn’t want to make a black-and-white statement and I didn’t want to take sides. This film is also about the clash between the forces of life and death in the Balkans, where death usually wins out; they conquer life, even Eros. It’s also about the Western world exploiting the Balkans’ misery.

FANG: How has the reaction been so far? If I were to guess, I’d say the people who understand the film want to praise you and shake your hand, but the rest want to condemn you and chop off your head.

DJORDJEVIC: Luckily, the audience knows what to expect from PORNO GANG before actually seeing it, so people with faint hearts didn’t come to see the film in large numbers. Because of that, I didn’t have huge problems with the audience reaction. There was some anger, some threats [in the comments] below the trailer on YouTube, but those people didn’t see the whole film. I believe that PORNO GANG is not an exhibitionist film, so I didn’t have the kind of problems you’re speaking of.

FANG: Are there any other Serbian films or filmmakers we should look out for?

DJORDJEVIC: Yes, Jovan Jovanovic’s film [HEALTHY AND YOUNG LIKE A ROSE] was bunkered in 1971 [during political censorship]. That movie was punk before punk was even defined—a masterpiece! As far as “edgy” contemporary Serbian cinema is concerned, there are films like ZONE OF THE DEAD, TT SYNDROME, TEARS FOR SALE, BELGRADE PHANTOM and SKINNING. Some people talk about the new wave of cruel Serbian films with a sociopolitical approach. We will see what will happen with that aspiration in the future—if there will be a sufficient number of films for us to be able to talk about the actual wave.

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